The Angry Cactus
by Lornesgoldenhair
Summary: The Doctor is injured on a trip to a pretty planet on Clara's birthday. Bad enough but the alien-fly natives look like they want to eat them both. Prompt by last1stnding


'What do you mean she's flown off?' Clara stood on a purple rocky outcrop, near a forest of midnight blue trees and huge orange cacti with stumpy little legs. She put her hands on her hips angrily. 'She can't just _fly off_!'

The Doctor was from this angle, below her, and occupying himself with a long stick and an area of pink sandy soil. He drew a TARDIS shape and then scuffed over it with his shoe.

'HADS, Clara, you know about the HADS,'

Clara frowned at him 'The Hostile Action Displacement Thingy….?'

'System, yes.'

'The thing that makes her fly off if faced with danger.'

'That's the one,' he said lowly, squinting out across the landscape for any sign of his ship.

Clara huffed, 'But that's ridiculous we're a) not near any apparent danger and b) you told me you switched it off after the last time.'

'Ah,' he said and she suddenly knew he'd forgotten. Not done it deliberately or for any real purpose, just forgotten. Like he forgot a lot of things. Like he forgot her birthday. Which was today.

She hopped off the rock. 'Well?' she said.

He looked up briefly, 'Well I forgot to switch it off,' he admitted and she rolled her eyes to the heavens, 'And er… well we can't tell if we're in danger yet we've only been here….'

'Six hours,' she said, 'We've been here six hours,' she pantomimed the events, 'Come on Clara, whose birthday I've forgotten, _again_ , let's explore a new pretty planet to make up for the fact I've forgotten to buy you a gift, except we'll get lost and spend six hours wandering the undergrowth, getting scratched by shrubbery and pointy spikey plants before returning to the spot we left the TARDIS to find she's run off because she's scared of something. What's she scared of?' Clara gestured around her, 'Cacti? Hedges? Small clusters of pink flowers? I can see her point its terrifying. Doctor… Doctor?!' she snapped to get his attention.

He was standing right next to her but he looked a million miles away. He held his hands in front of him and was turning them over again and again curiously.

'Doctor what are you doing?'

'Hmm?'

She stepped closer and looked at the backs of his hands. He was scratched, almost like a kitten had been playing too long with him, nothing deep but many of them, red lines across the exposed skin.

'How did you do that?' she asked.

'Plants I suppose, I don't remember,' he scratched the marks making them increasingly inflamed. Clara batted his hands away from each other.

'You'll make it worse.'

'It itches,' he whined.

'Leave it alone, 'Clara said, 'It was probably one of the leggy Cacti, if and when we ever find the TARDIS we can go to the medibay and get some cream or a bay leaf or something. Come on let's go and look, it'll keep you occupied and the day isn't getting any younger. Neither am I for that matter…' she stared at him but he wasn't returning the look, 'You know given its my _birthday_ ,' she tried again. 'Oh never mind' Clara trudged off towards the blue trees again, her tread heavy with weariness and frustration.

It wasn't what she had imagined for the day. She'd imagined a day where she could work on their relationship, a day where he would be keen to please. She'd thought maybe a nice shared breakfast, a walk somewhere pretty, maybe she could hold his hand again, maybe for once he'd initiate the hand holding himself. Masybe even, dare she think it? A kiss? A birthday kiss? Was that too much to ask?

Well apparently so. He was so obviously interested, such a terrible flirt, but he only seemed to be able to flirt during the next trip or adventure. Stick him in a room with you when you weren't under pain of death, and tell him you like him and he'd lose the plot, flush bright red and leg it. She'd hoped her day out would be a beautiful perfect romantic reason for smooching, and that she wasn't going to have to just confront him and demand a kiss.

She turned around, now deep in the forest, and looked down the trail behind her.

'Doctor? Doctor where are you?'

She could hear rustling and the cracking of twigs. 'Behind you,' he replied eventually and the rustling continued. 'Just give me a minute, bit … out of puff….'

Clara frowned, why was he taking so long? 'Hurry up,' she called, 'It'll be dark at this rate,' she moved on, aware she was coming across as tetchy and fed up but in truth she _was_ tetchy and fed up and maybe he should work out for himself why that was and….

Clara froze in her place and stared ahead. In a clearing a dozen or so feet away there were several gigantic round…. Fly things. She couldn't think of a better term. They were large, spherical, six legged and furry; purple and black fur, and two big shiny insectoid eyes on the end of small stalks. She'd seen plenty of aliens by now, including giant wasps and bees but these things had something extra about them. They stank. They stank and they were all currently standing on a large unidentifiable pile of half decomposed meat. Every now and then one of them tucked up its legs and rolled around on it. Clara covered her mouth and nose and very carefully took a quiet step backwards, then another.

'What are you doing?' the Doctor asked loudly, catching her by the shoulders. She spun round and shushed him.

'Flies… huge round smelly flies!' she hissed and gestured to the clearing. The Doctor peered past her.

'Who? Them? Oh don't worry about them, perfectly harmless,' he continued to speak at a normal tone while she desperately gestured at him to shut up. 'I've met this species before on a nearby moon, I didn't realise they'd colonised here too. Eating habits a bit grim but otherwise really quite civilised… wait… I've forgotten….' he trailed off. Clara was standing with her eyes covered willing him to be quiet. 'Um… Clara….' He added after a moment.

'What?' she squeaked.

'This lot don't seem to be quite as civilised as their cousins on the next moon over. In fact I think this may be a totally different species…'

She sighed and uncovered her eyes, took in the view of at least ten purple haired round-flies standing around them with something akin to spears. 'Every time Doctor, every time,' she said. 'Happy birthday, me…'

'Is it your birthday?' he asked wide eyed and turned seriously to the creatures around them. 'Stop! Stop immediately Round-Fly Foot Soldiers, it's Clara's birthday! This is no way to treat a lady on her birthday, release us immediately! Can't we do this another day? Will there at least be cake?'

'Shut up,' she answered as she was huckled towards the clearing.

Ten hours. According to her watch anyway which was by and large useless since she started running around space and time but which could still approximate how long they were trapped on a planet; a vital skill to have. The sun had set and here they were, in a twenty-foot-wide round pit in the centre of the round-flies' village. It was too deep to scrabble out of and the open roof looked temptingly out at the stars and moons circling above them. The view below was less pleasant, more of the rotting meat Clara had seen the hosts consume, was laid out at the base of the pit. Food, the Doctor had explained, which was for them should they get peckish while in captivity. Clara chose the spot on the floor furthest from it and her drew her legs up under her.

At first she thought they'd come and fetch them, to take them to their leader or whatever, but time ticked by and nothing happened and then about an hour ago they'd all vanished, leaving the Doctor and his companion stranded for the night in the hole. Clara was still pretty annoyed with him so she watched the moons circle each other for a bit and ignored his attempts to make peace, or indeed a plan of escape. He was rambling on about this and that, not making much sense at all, but then he frequently didn't and she'd learned to tune him out if needs be. Eventually he went quiet.

She frowned. It was never good when he went quiet. Clara looked across to where he sat a few feet from her, head tipped back against the wall.

'Doctor?' she hissed.

There was no response and she looked at him curiously.

'Doctor!' she tried again a bit louder, 'This is no time to be sleeping. You never sleep. Stop it and find a way out of here.'

He moaned and she scrambled over on her knees. 'Doctor?' Clara peered at him, prodded his arm.

'Mmm?' he moaned again and opened his eyes. 'Clara?'

'You're sleeping? Why are you sleeping now isn't the time!' she told him, irritated. She watched as he heaved himself up a little straighter and then flinched, lifted his hands to examine them again. Even in the pale moonlight Clara could see they were red and angry looking where he had been scratched. They looked like they were weeping too.

'Are you ok?' she asked.

'Fine,' he said.

She gave him an unconvinced look and gently took each of his hands in hers. She made a tsking noise between her teeth.

'Doctor these look really nasty.'

'Yes…' he said vaguely, looking round the room, 'I think there must be some sort of poison… I feel poisoned… by whatever…. Poisoned me…' he blinked and looked back at her. 'Where are we?'

If Clara had been worried before she was doubly so now, 'Doctor don't you remember?'

Blink, 'No.'

'We were exploring and you got scratched by plants, cactus plants, and the TARDIS decided to fly off on her own and we got captured by round purple hairy flies who stuck us in this pit along with our dinner and went to bed for the night.'

'Oh,' he said, 'Dinner?'

She nodded at the decomposing meat.

'Young woman, I might be confused, but that is not dinner.'

'Young woman?' Clara said in a tone just a little too high pitched to hide her alarm.

'Yes, that is biologically accurate, no?'

'Yes… but… Doctor… have you forgotten my name? You knew it a second ago!'

He opened his mouth to reply and looked horribly ashamed, glancing at her furtively and then looking down at his injured hands.

'Oh god you have!' she said, 'Doctor… my name is Clara, remember? Your impossible girl?'

He looked at her vacantly, 'My what?'

'Impossible girl. We travel together, you're my best friend? I threw myself into your timestream and now there are thousands of me…. Ok that bit might just sound a bit crazy, but seriously, we go back a long way, don't you remember at all?'

She was feeling increasingly scared. How they were ever going to get out of this in one piece with the Doctor as blank as he seemed was a mystery. She tried again.

'I need you to remember, something, anything, because I need you with me so we can get out of here alive.'

He nodded vaguely and then in horror Clara watched his eyes begin to droop again.

'No!' she squeezed his painful hands and he yelped, looked at her with the betrayed hurt expression of a kicked dog. 'I'm sorry, but no sleeping.'

'I'm tired,' he said, and pulled his hands away from her, 'And these scratches hurt,' his voice became mumbling, 'And I've done what you've asked…'

'What?'

'I've remembered something….' He slumped back against the wall and his breathing slowed significantly. He'd be snoring in moments.

'Have you? What?' she demanded.

'It's your… birthday….' He breathed and passed out completely.

For a few minutes Clara just stared at his inanimate body. How dare he pass out? How dare he be unconscious at a time like this? Typical bloody Doctor. Then she looked around the dark pit and felt the chill of the night settle on her and she suddenly felt very lonely and very scared. What if those things came back? What if they decided to cook her, or him? How could she protect them both?

Clara edged closer to the Doctor and began to hunt through his pockets but as always they were endless bottomless affairs and she was rewarded with all sorts of useless gadgetry before eventually she stumbled across what she was looking for. She gave it a shake and a green light came on. The sonic. She passed its beam over the pit for any helpful items and found none, then she passed it over the Doctor.

It was poison, he was right, and the sonic helpfully indicated that the TARDIS wherever she was had a good antidote. 'Brilliant,' Clara uttered under her breath. She watched the information scroll a little further, concerned that it was a particularly nasty type of poison if it was ingested in any way by a Time Lord. A human might feel a tad hot and confused, a Time Lord would lose the best part of his memory and fall into… Clara sat back in realisation. It was one of his comas. He'd decided now was a good time to have a healing coma.

Well she supposed he hadn't really 'decided,' more 'was forced to' before his brain melted completely. She looked down at him, stroked his arm briefly.

'You do what you need to do,' she encouraged, 'Just try and hurry up because I don't know how long the nights here are and I really need you awake before morning. Really don't fancy going up against a dozen or so of those round-fly things,' she looked down at the sonic and flipped it in her hand, 'Although I do have this, that's a start.'

More time passed and it was becoming increasingly oppressive, just her and the dark and the smell of their 'food.' Now and then she would scan the Doctor and give him an update on his condition which at first appeared to be steadily improving.

'Look at you fighting the good fight against poison,' she commented, 'Ok so the sonic thinks its cactus poison, those weird things with legs and spikes, and your very clever physiology has managed to create some sort of natural antidote. Even better the sonic has created a sort of score out of a hundred for how well you are. Right now it says you're creeping up to a still low 37% well, but over the next hour if you keep creating antidote this could go as high as 68% at which point you'd be awake and also usefully know who I am.'

She switched the sonic off.

'I don't need you to be 100% Doctor, I just need you awake,' Clara looked up at the stars and then edged closer still to her companion, 'Its lonely without you,' she admitted. 'Anyway we always work these things out together right? You're the brains and I'm the common sense… and the tact…. And the pretty one…. And Good cop when you're bad cop…' she stopped and looked over his face. 'You're really pale,' she said, worried, 'Are you cold?' she placed a hand on his face, 'Ok you're cold. I mean you're always cold but now you're really cold.'

Clara took the sonic out again and ran another scan. His normal body temperature was sixteen degrees, now it had dropped to thirteen. She quickly ran the poison scan.

'Wellbeing down?' she said horrified, '43%?! That doesn't make sense you're not supposed to get worse?' she shook the sonic hoping it would give her more information and to its credit it lit up again. The poison was adapting in his bloodstream as fast as he could change his response; a race between his body and the cactus toxin. Clara watched the figures fluctuate with increasing concern, his temperature plummeting further. This didn't look like any ordinary healing coma. This looked like a coma chosen by the poison for its benefit, rather than by him.

When his temperature dropped to five and his body started to shiver next to her she wrapped herself around him best she could, donating her coat to the parts of him still exposed to the cool night. Clara held on tight and tried to quell his shuddering. She could feel his breath cold on her neck as she held him, it was like cuddling a fridge with its door open. Her heart raced with fear and for a few minutes she wished the fly-things would come back. Maybe she could bargain with them, maybe she could plead his case? They might know a cure or an antidote for the plants they lived with on this planet? Maybe if she offered herself they might help him and then let the Doctor go.

Oh who was she kidding, Round-Flies were not friendly as the 'meal' they had provided for them proved. She wondered if it was a case of some food being laid out for Clara and the Doctor as their prisoners, and more a case of she was looking at what remained of the last person left in the pit. She shut her eyes and clung to the Doctor, aware that the first light of dawn was breaking above.

'Listen to me,' she said, 'because I think you once said you could hear everything in one of these comas, so listen. The sun's coming up. And I think that means they will come back and do god knows what to us. And even if they don't I think they might just leave us here in this pit. Either way, I think we're going to die. So plus point is you get to miss out on all that, you know however they chose to kill us, minus point we're both dead. It's my birthday… well possibly not my birthday anymore…. But within twenty four hours of it so I'm going to claim my present anyway because I didn't get a chance to yesterday and this might be my last chance.'

Clara leaned down and kissed the top of the Doctor's forehead softly and slowly. She stroked his hair a few times and leaned her cheek against it for a moment before she frowned.

'Is it me or are you a bit warmer?' she guddled for the sonic but a sound from above halted her and she slowly looked up to find dozen upon dozen round-fly around the top of the pit. Some had the spears she had seen the day before, others had different rudimentary weapons… all of them looked sort of hungry. One or wo tstepped forward and some grit fell close to where Clara was sitting. Instinctively she held her hand over the Doctor's head to protect him.

'Right…' she said to herself, 'Um… little bit of a problem… unconscious Doctor, lots of round-flies, no way out….'

And then she heard a different sound altogether. A whining whoorping sound as the lost TARDIS returned and materialised around them.

When the ship appeared around her the wall Clara had been leaning on vanished and both she and the Doctor collapsed to the floor of the console room, one on top of the other. She lay for a moment unsure of what had happened and looking down at his face. Then she heard the ship wind up around them again and push itself into the vortex. Clara rolled off the Doctor and looked up at the rotor in relief.

'Oh you clever girl,' she told the ship, 'I take everything back I've ever said that's bad about you. You are the best, I swear.' Clara sat up suddenly, 'Antidote, need antidote,' she scrabbled to her feet, 'So yeah, just one more thing,' she asked as she scurried through to the med bay, 'Antidote for orange cactus things, don't ask me the Latin name no idea….' she burst into the med bay.

A small bottle of green fluid was sitting in the middle of the counter ready for her. She snatched it up with a grin and dashed back to the Doctor.

He was lying flat out on his back, pale and motionless so Clara dropped to her knees beside him and moved his head to her lap. She gently smoothed back his hair and uncapped the little bottle. How much? All of it she decided and fed it into his mouth carefully and slowly so that he wouldn't choke. Empty, she set it aside and waited.

And waited. She glanced nervously round the room.

'Why isn't he waking up?' she asked. The ship remained silently concerned, its presence hovering in her mind, watching the Doctor.

Suddenly his eyes opened and he took a long deep breath which scared the life out of her. He sat bolt upright and looked down at his hands where the reddened swelling was abating and the scratches were healed.

'Cacti!' he shouted. 'It was the cacti!'

'Um… yes… but do we have to be so loud about it,' she laughed and he turned towards her.

'Sorry,' he said very quietly, 'The cacti nearly finished me off. I don't know how you managed to get us away from all those fly creatures…'

'Oh you remember now… do you remember all of it?

'Ah,' he said ashamedly, 'I forgot your name didn't I?'

She folded her arms, 'Worse than that you forgot who I was. I don't care if my name falls out your head but we….' she hesitated trying to find the right words, 'We're… well you and I, we….' She slumped. What were they exactly?

The Doctor looked at her curiously. 'Clara are you trying to put our relationship into words, into some sort of phrase that surmises and encompasses all that we are?'

'I suppose so, yes,' she said.

'Such a word doesn't exist,' he replied looking at her kindly. 'The closest would be in Gallifreyan but your ears wouldn't cope with it.'

'Oh.'

'Probably start bleeding or something.'

'Right. Best leave it then,' she conceded and moved to stand. The Doctor stopped her with a gentle pressure on one arm. He slid his hand down to hold hers.

'There are some human words that come close,' he said, 'And actions too, little gestures, intimacies, simple things…' he leaned closer to her.

'Simple things….?' she echoed as his eyes dipped to her lips.

'Happy birthday,' he whispered.


End file.
